


9-Meditations

by WritestuffLee



Series: The Warrior's Heart, Volume 1, Early Days [9]
Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, M/M, PWP
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-11-23
Updated: 1999-11-23
Packaged: 2017-12-10 12:26:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/786039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritestuffLee/pseuds/WritestuffLee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Qui-Gon & Obi-Wan contemplate a sudden change in their relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	9-Meditations

## I: Evening

###  _Qui-Gon:_

My knees hurt when I do this now. They’ve hurt for some years and still I do it, like every Jedi, sit here once in the morning, once at night, sometimes in between when the need arises, clear my mind, open myself to the Force, and truly think. Sometimes there are no thoughts at all, only the peace of being immersed in the Force and seeing the way. Sometimes there are only thoughts and no peace, or little of it. Sometimes one leads to the other. Tonight I’m looking for peace and finding only an endless stream of thoughts and images and turmoil in my heart. Tonight I have a great deal to meditate upon—and my knees hurt.

The theme for this evening’s meditation, Master Jinn, is “Be mindful of your desires.”

Last night, Obi-Wan and I went together to the gardens, not to meditate, precisely, but to make love as a meditation, to cleanse the gardens of sadness and pain and death with our own joy. I was not, I confess, sure we could do it. More precisely, that I could do it. We have known one another for seven years, yet we are such new lovers that passion still rides us as we ride each other, so I expected it to be difficult. But everything was different last night. Everything. My padawan, my lover, was solemn and serious as he can be, and yet it was plain he had lost nothing of his enthusiasm or desire for me, and that reined me in. We made slow and careful and very ardent love to cleanse the gardens, but something more than ardor drove us both. Wishes and unspoken hopes and an unspeakable need rode us last night, rode me. I cannot say what impelled my lover, only that it did so to a better end than mine.

I have wished, all my life, for what I had last night, for a coupling where I would join with my lover through the Force and he or she would do the same with me, the two of us annealing our hearts together, seeing one another as we truly are and love growing greater for it. I tried for years to share that with Mace, only to find it built a great emptiness between us instead of bringing us closer. I hoped for it with Tahl before she was snatched from me. Last night I was granted my wish, for just an instant, matched heart to heart by the generosity of a young man who loves me so much he would follow me to hell. Obi-Wan cried out for me and I answered as I always have, in hope, then—wondrously, as no other lover has—he turned that offering back to me again, effortlessly. We poured everything of ourselves into the Force together, binding us inextricably for that one moment. I came inside him, he following upon the moment and it left us both senseless, Obi-Wan unconscious and me—

Me it left emptier than I have ever been before.

Careful what you wish for, Master Jinn.

I’ve been given such a great gift, to know this man this way and now all I feel is—what? Turmoil, not peace. Need, not fulfillment. Greed. Jealousy. Fear, not contentment. Such a great fear of losing him now, a fear that springs from past experience. And that fear will undo me as it nearly did in the garden, send me down the same path Leth Astl took, the same path I nearly took after Tahl’s death. If not for Obi-Wan’s gift of his bottomless love, I would have taken the first steps already. How I’ve used him.

“Wise enough are you to love your own padawan?” my master asked me. “Learned from your mistakes have you?” He knows me so well, better than I know myself, if I were not too proud to admit it.

_Yes, My Master. Of course I’ve learned._ Selfish old fool. I’ve learned nothing, except, perhaps, that I am not fit to be a master, especially not Obi-Wan’s, nor fit to be his lover, and that it is too late to cease being either.

###  _Obi-Wan:_

I can hardly sit still. I couldn’t manage to sit in the same room with him and have a calm heart and mind, so I’ve come out to the balcony in the cold air to clear my head. I’m not at all sure I can do anything but think about him, when I should be trying to settle my mind and heart. There are times, and this is one of them, that we’re like radioactive elements: bring us close enough together and there’s no stopping the reaction. Especially after last night and this morning. I never thought that what happened to us in the gardens was possible, that sex, even with someone I love as deeply as I love him, could be so powerful. Powerful enough make me lose consciousness, powerful enough to reduce my serene, imperturbable master to uncontrollable sobs.

I’m not sure, in fact, that it was the sex at all, though I haven’t asked him his thoughts on the matter. We haven’t discussed what happened between us last night and this morning, haven’t even mentioned it, which I find disturbing. He said everything would be different afterwards, and it is, but not the way I thought. Nor the way he thought either, from the look of it.

All day he’s been restless and distracted, pacing through our rooms, long fingers touching things absently, stroking objects and furniture the way he strokes my skin, as though he needs to touch me and can’t. I’ve caught him looking at me at odd times during the day with an expression somewhere between grief and longing and it chokes me. I’ve rarely seen him like this, unable to concentrate or focus, tongue-tied, distant, clumsy in the katas to the point of nearly injuring himself and me before he stopped, stammering and apologizing, and actually fled the room.

I wish he would say something, but I know he won’t and I can’t, because it’s not my place to question him. I’m only beginning to understand how harsh the constraints on us are, how hard it must be for him. Lovers or no, there’s still a barrier between us, and I suspect neither of us know where the boundaries lie quite yet. But I thought that, if anything, what we did last night would bring down some of them. Instead, it seems only to have built another.

I don’t understand how or why, because so much opened up for me last night. For just that one moment, I think I finally saw and felt, in a way I never have before, what he’s been trying to teach me all these years of our connection to the Force. It bound us together and then released us again, and it was glorious to be with him in the whole web of life, to sense everyone and everything around us through and with him. Better, though, to see _him_ and know he’s everything I thought he was, and more, and different at the same time, and full of human faults, though no less admirable or desirable for them.

Just a taste of it, that’s all we had, but it was enough. Enough to make me want more. More of him, more of us together, more of that confluence. I don’t understand why he’s like this now. How could we come away from what we had last night feeling so differently? I’ve never felt so complete and he just seems shattered and hollow.

Perhaps it’s nothing to do with me. I don’t know my own master as well as I like to think. I saw so much of him last night that I didn’t know was there, that longing I never would have guessed at, all the old pain I had barely imagined, and something I never would never have dreamed of in Qui-Gon Jinn: self-doubt.

But he is a very private man, not to say secretive, and there is a great deal he shields me from or shields from me, even now. He maintains a certain careful distance, a reticence I don’t dare breach, as I would not have dreamed of entering his room without his permission before we were lovers. Tonight, it’s a wide distance, when it should be anything but. I don’t know how to bridge it, how to bring him close again. How to tell him that, whatever it is, I’m here, that all he has to do is ask me, touch me.

## Interlude

They sit together in the same room, silent and outwardly companionable, but there is a tension in the air that has not often been there before. The older one fidgets and paces with an uncharacteristic restlessness, rising repeatedly from his chair for tea, for paper, for a stylus, for this, for that; the younger one, sprawled on the floor with an unconscious animal grace, watches him surreptitiously, darting a glance up now and then from his datapad and calculations. Neither of them speak, but there are words hanging in the air like moisture, waiting for the right conditions to coalesce.

The tension is almost a third living thing in the room and speaks not only of words unuttered but of a deep love between them and some hurt one has given the other. There is no animosity or anger in it, for neither of these two would allow themselves such feelings. What is present is constraint and uncertainty on one’s part, need and stubborn denial on the other’s—and a certain forbidden amount of amorphous and shared fear.

Eventually, worn down, the younger one yawns and rises and puts away his study materials, tidies the room and walks behind the older one’s chair, where he sits with a frayed and ancient book on his lap whose pages he has not turned in hours. The younger man touches his shoulder affectionately and the older man starts.

“Sorry, Master.” He leans down and kisses the top of the other’s head. “Didn’t mean to startled you. I’m going to bed.”

The older man reaches up and touches his face. “Good night, Padawan. I’ll be in soon.”

But it is some hours before he enters the darkened room and joins his lover in bed, and the young man has fallen asleep, waiting for him. He slides between the covers carefully, trying not to wake the young man, and lies some distance from him, turned away, as though they are strangers sharing a bed, not new and hungry lovers.

Beside him, across the vast distance of unwarmed sheet, the younger man wakes out of his light doze, puzzled at the absence of embracing arms. He is usually the one to turn away in his sleep where the other cuddles up against him through the night, nuzzling his neck, his ears, the spot where his braid begins, whatever is within reach and appealing. The feel of lightly scratchy beard and warm breath against his shoulder or neck or cheek or the top of his head is so familiar now that he finds it hard to fall or stay asleep without it, as it has been tonight. The lateness of the hour and his very light doze have left him sleepy, and the nearness of his lover, aroused.

Fatigue tugs at the older man, too, but he knows he will not sleep, wonders why he bothered to come to bed, except that he craves the other’s presence. Part of him wants to hold the beautiful young man, fit the shape of his long, lean body to the curl of the more compact one beside him, breathe in the scents of warmth and desire, feel the texture of skin change beneath his hands as they slide over every surface. Another part recoils, not so much from that contact itself, as from the need that drives the desire for it. But it is a need he cannot master, finally, and he starts to reach for the younger man, only to find himself already being embraced from behind.

Nestling up against his master’s long, scarred back, the young man inhales deeply, smelling the faint reminders of soap and incense and the tantalizing scent of skin unique to this man he loves—clean like the air after a rain with a hint of male musk that grows so much stronger when they sweat together in workouts or sex. He would know this man by that smell alone, anywhere, were all his other senses deadened. Nothing conjures up memory or desire like the faintest trace of it in a room, on clothing or sheets. So often only that slight stimulus makes him hard, as he is now.

A stubbled cheek rubs against the older man’s shoulder, fingers brush the hair from his neck, and warm breath spreads across it, followed by soft lips. One arm slides around him, one hand comes to rest over his heart, fingers stroking his nipple, making him shiver, sending a jolt through him. The lips move down his neck, across his shoulder, nipping gently. It brings a moan into his throat, one that comes out a growl. He reaches back, pulls the young man hard against him with a handful of ass, knowing he is leaving fingermarks, feels a stiff cock pressed against his buttocks, knows he wants it inside him, stretching him, filling him, hurting him.

Sensing what he wants, knowing his lover that well now, the younger man pulls away a little and strokes the skin above the cleft in his master’s ass in slow, lazy circles. He’s rewarded with a shiver.

Bucking back against him, the older takes the younger’s hand, sucks and licks the fingers and lets him go, breathing harshly in anticipation.

Directions clear, he circles the ring of muscle with one wet finger, gently pressing for entrance. There’s more than the usual resistance before he’s inside that tight, hot space, stroking skillfully. He props himself up on one elbow and leans over the older man’s shoulder, watching his face in the dark, until they are almost impossibly entwined like two fish spawning. He loves this feeling, loves the intimacy, the reaching inside his lover to touch him in secret places that make him shudder and moan. But that physical intimacy is only a small part of loving the man beside him and tonight he wants more.

So does his partner. He presses back into his lover, and turns his head, bringing his mouth to the juncture of shoulder and neck above him. His teeth clamp against flesh and sinew in a burst of hot breath, and then there’s a cry from the young man as he bites down hard. A second finger pushes into him, echoing the hurt, and they thrash against each other, making the bed rock. But it is not enough. Not enough to fill the emptiness. _Not enough._ //Not enough.//

The younger feels the bite distantly, though he knows it will hurt later, glorying in its possessiveness, in the sense of belonging it gives him. Not given to bragging, he finds it quietly gratifying to be marked and seen as such in the changing rooms. At first, his lover’s ferocity disturbed him, but he’s come to expect and need it now, and it sends the same kind of thrill through him that his master’s hands on him do. And he knows what else it means, without explanation. _More. Harder. Hurry._ //Not enough.// He reaches down and spreads his lover without further preparation.

The young man thrusts his hard cock into him savagely and it hurts enough to bring tears to his eyes, sending a vicious burn and ache along his spine, down his legs and through his pelvis. He lets go of his lover’s flesh, tasting blood, licks the tender skin now moist with sweat and his own saliva, and bucks against his lover, pushing him painfully deeper, another growl escaping him. His lover drives into him harder and faster and there’s another long moment of burn and ache before his own endorphins kick in and all he wants is more.

They pound against each other, the young man’s breath harsh and hot against his own shoulder, his braid swinging in a wild arc as he thrusts. There’s a keening hum in the younger man’s throat as he nears his own climax. He reaches for the older man’s cock and stops his thrusts with a little involuntary grunt and shudder, stunned, finding it flaccid.

## II: Morning

###  _Qui-Gon:_

On your knees again, Master Jinn. On your knees until you get it right. Until you know what to say, what to think, how to feel again. How not to hurt the man you love.

It wasn’t your fault, love. It wasn’t you. You were so gentle with me all day yesterday, Obi-Wan, after our return from the gardens, touching me as though I might fly apart. Touching me constantly, to reassure me of your presence, your love. Though I nearly maimed you in the practice rooms, you took the blame, apologizing, claimed you weren’t paying attention when we both knew the fault was mine.

Then I let you make love to me last night, when I had nothing in me to give. What a fool. What a disaster. What a perversion. I imagine you sitting here on my lap, Padawan, your young and beautiful body joined to this old flesh as it was only hours ago, and just the thought makes me hard, as it should have last night. Of late, it also makes me incredibly sad, and that, perhaps, is what went wrong.

Not that I regret for a moment loving you, or regret a moment of our loving over the past tenthyear. You’ve brought me such joy, Obi-Wan. I wish I could show you how much. I wake in the morning with you beside me and feel as though I’ve been reborn, given another life. And perhaps I have. Perhaps it’s not too much of an exaggeration to say that you’ve saved me from becoming old and lonely and humorless—and bitter. I’ve said as much and gotten only a look of incredulity from you, as though you cannot imagine me being any of those things, but you know the seeds are in me and that they had already begun to grow in my heart before we became lovers. You saw it in me before you were my padawan, and more when Tahl died. You see it every day in my wrangling with the Council. Without you, I would merely bury myself in my work until it killed me, as I tried to do when Xan turned, as I might have still done had you not loved me—had you not simply been in my life.

The year you turned 18, I started to realize what a gift you were and yet also to feel my heart finally turning to stone in me. That year you were coming into your manhood with a vengeance, awash in hormones, beautiful, at the peak of fitness, singing with life force and power even when you were standing still. I would stand beside you and feel your presence in the Force like lightning hunting for ground. At times it would make my hair stand on end, yet you were unaware of it. You could not yet see what I do in the Force, are only now coming to know it as I do, but I knew that ability was in you. No other lover I’ve had has shared that gift with me and, ultimately, that lack tore Mace and I apart. So seeing that possibility in you only made me want you more.

It was knowing I could not have you that made me lonely, and knowing why that made me feel old and humorless. What foolishness, I told myself, to even wonder if this young man would vaguely entertain the idea of wanting you. Having found the partner I had been looking for all my life and to be faced with your loss before even having a chance to know you that way would make anyone bitter. You were glorious: handsome, powerful, gifted, wise, alive to the Force, whole, unscarred.

And then I discovered that you loved me. Our first kiss was lightning, and I was the ground. I’m still scorched by it, electrified by you.

I am so lucky, Obi-Wan, so lucky to have found you, so lucky to be loved by you. I am almost afraid of how lucky I am. I don’t know if it comes only from being wary of such happiness after so much loss or because some of your prescience has touched me as our bond has grown, but I wake sometimes at night in a cold panic and reach for you as though you were already gone. I’ve borne such losses before, but this might just undo me. And it cannot.

You act as if the 35 years between us is nothing but a well of experience to draw upon, and it is that. You’ve never asked what lovers I’ve had or how many, guessed at only one of them, but you’re eager enough to make use of what knowledge I’ve collected from them, a willing pupil as always. But that time between us is so much more than simply experience, my love. I have scars not just on my body but in my heart and spirit as well, and all of them make me who I am, just as yours will shape you. Each injury, physical or otherwise, takes something from us, no matter how well we heal. Were you older and more experienced yourself, you would know that, and it is something I cannot teach you. Only time can.

I am not the man I was and it’s this that makes me sad now. If I could have come to you before—oh, before Mace and I hurt each other so, before I learned how to shield myself so well from the horror of killing, before I took Xan as my padawan, before his turning cut me to the core, before I knew I had to kill him, before Tahl, before her death, before such darkness touched me—we would be so different together. Even so, it’s not my youth I miss, nor my scars that I regret. It’s my responsibilities that make me sad.

What I regret is being your master when what I want is to be only your lover.

###  _Obi-Wan:_

We sit in separate rooms again, my master in the cold air of the balcony this time, and I on our bed where we made love again last night. Where I thought we were making love. Where he apparently thought we were doing something else. Where it turned into something . . . base, and a little foul. I don’t know what it was. Where we fucked.

Where I fucked him.

I thought I gave him what he wanted. Apparently, it wasn’t enough, or wasn’t the right thing, or something I can’t fathom was wrong. I thought he wanted me, wanted it hard and fast and ferocious the way he was biting and bucking against me. I’ve still got the marks of his teeth on me, surrounding the worst bruise he’s ever given me. And there’s blood on the sheets; we’ve never done that before. When I reached for him, thinking he was as close to coming as I was, he wasn’t even hard.

No explanation. No laying of blame, either, but no reassurances. “Finish it,” he said. But of course I couldn’t, after that. He tried to hold me, but it didn’t feel—I couldn’t—

I didn’t want him holding me. Not after that. Not after he used me that way.

Used me. And for what? Certainly not pleasure. But I feel used.

It’s not much blood, but still . . .

It’s not like he was out of control. He wasn’t. He knew exactly what he was doing, what he wanted from me.

There’s blood on my pillow, too.

Part of me wanted to go sleep somewhere else, my own bed, the couch, anywhere but in the same bed with him. I haven’t felt so empty since I was thirteen and he turned me away. It feels almost exactly the same, like I’m being punished—

Oh. Oh shit.

Punished.

Idiot. That’s what he wanted. He _wanted_ me to hurt him. He wanted me to _hurt_ him. He wanted _me_ to hurt _him_. He wanted punishment. From me.

Oh. All the Sith hells.

Shit.

Now I don’t know what I feel.

A little sick.

Hurt. Used. Empty. Totally confused.

I know I love him. I know he loves me. I don’t know what’s happened to us, except that everything’s changed somehow, and not for the better, since our night in the gardens.

When I woke this morning, he was already out on the balcony. He’s been there for some time now, on his knees, and I still don’t know what he’s thinking. I’ve never seen him wound so tightly before, or so silent. He’s become a closed book to me.

I don’t know what to do.

I’ve lost the way.

## A Resolution

It stops his breath to see his young lover like this, sitting cross-legged in the midst of the disheveled bed, naked and bathed in morning sunlight, stormy eyes closed, heavy and agile hands at rest on his knees, back straight, the short red-gold hair and long braid glowing in the light. His chest rises and falls easily with his breath, but though he seems at peace, there are small signs that his own thoughts and feelings are as disordered as his master’s: the vertical line between his fierce brows, the compressed horizontal line of his lips, the tension in his shoulders and abdomen that only his master would notice, does notice and knows he is the cause of. The stray, unguarded thought his apprentice broadcasts only confirms it: //I’ve lost the way.// His own belly tightens.

Suddenly aware of his master’s presence and scrutiny, the younger man draws in a deep, ragged breath, straining for the control he feels he has just lost. Before he can stop them, two tears spill down over his face. Sith take his master’s timing, he thinks, struggling. Neither of them move from their respective positions, he on the bed and his master in the doorway, but the bond flares between them with shared pain until he slams his own shields down and determinedly withdraws into himself. _I can’t face him like this,_ he thinks. Somewhere inside is an untroubled center he needs to find, to regain his equilibrium. As he would not elsewhere than here in the Temple, he severs his conscious connections to his senses until nothing exists but himself and the Force.

He’s not sure which cuts him most: his lover’s pain or that he’s so quickly barred from sharing it. The young man’s breathing is a little ragged yet, but his control is remarkable, his master observes with a cool detachment he despises in himself. _So beautiful,_ another part of him thinks, one he despises even more at the moment. Marring the perfection of his lover’s body is a large, dark bruise at the juncture of shoulder and neck, less a love-bite than a savaging. It makes him wince to see in sunlight the damage he inflicted in the dark.

Carefully, he sits down behind his lover on the bed, strokes his fingers over the bruise, feels the scabs from torn skin and winces again, hates that he had so little control and so much need. The younger man’s shoulder twitches a little under his touch, as though he were shaking off an itch, but he doesn’t break his meditation. Gently, the older man lays his whole hand over the marks, closes his eyes and brings the Force to bear on the injury, accelerating the healing already taking place. When he removes his hand, the bruise has faded to a pale greenish-yellow and the puncture wounds and tears are merely dark stains on the fair skin. He kisses what remains and leans back, waiting.

The younger man ignores his lover for some time, staying deep in his meditation, oblivious to the outside world, but finding only a maelstrom inside. Rarely has there been such an absence of comfort in his own meditations. He opens himself up not to his physical senses again, but to the currents of the Force that flow through and around him, searching those leading into and from the future for some reassurance. This is his gift, one his master does not share and only half believes in, though he has recently sent his apprentice to develop his skill with Master Yoda. The key, he has been taught, is not to search at all, merely to focus on the person or thing in question and let it lead one through the shifting future. He thinks of his master, focuses on the hot ember of love in his heart and . . . lets go.

Past and present glide by him in a confusing jumble of images and the future with it, so he cannot tell one from the other easily. He sees his master as a young man, short haired and clean-shaven, side by side with Plo Koon in pitched close combat at the mouth of an alley, the tight press of attackers falling back under the combined application of Force shields and lightsabers until they have cleared a city block’s perimeter around themselves, allowing the huddled group of women and children and aged behind them to gain the cover of another building. He sees him some years older, kneeling before Saesee Tiin in the Council Chamber, shaking violently under the Iktotchi’s hands until Mace Windu rapidly crosses the floor and pulls him away, into his own arms. He sees a much younger Padawan Jinn with gawky limbs and a long dark braid whirling with impossible grace through the katas under Master Yoda’s watchful and approving eyes. He sees his master and himself with a young blond-haired boy and an elaborately dressed woman aboard a ship. Finally, he sees his lover with hair gone beautifully silver, worn in a long braid down his back, seated in the Temple gardens holding hands with another man wearing a military uniform and a general’s rank tabs, and he watches as they kiss with growing passion and embrace, then separate enough for him to recognize his own features on the general’s face, considerably older. Then, horribly, he sees a pyre, his master’s body in the flames, looking much as he does now—

There is no further outward sign of the emotions roiling inside his young lover, nor of his struggle to bring them under control, and no sense of him in the Force behind his shields. He sits patiently, having finished his own meditations to no useful end, allowing his apprentice as much time as he needs. Finally, the younger man draws in a deep breath and opens his eyes but doesn’t turn around. Instead, he sits very still for a moment, then shivers and draws his knees up to his chest and crosses his arms over them, hiding his face in his arms. He is curled around himself as tightly as possible, as though against a coming blow.

His master touches him again tentatively, running one large hand over his smoothly arched back and shoulders. The young man shivers under the touch but does not otherwise move.

“Obi-Wan.”

“Master.” His voice is muffled in his arms.

“Please, look at me.”

The young man unfolds himself and turns around reluctantly, unwilling to meet his lover’s gaze. The older man takes his chin in one hand, tilts it up, forcing him to. The younger man’s eyes are the green-grey-blue of restless ocean, astonishingly beautiful, but full of pain and confusion, and his gaze soon falls away unhappily.

His master leans forward and kisses him tenderly; his lover’s mouth is warm but unresponsive under his own, not with distaste or anger but caution.

“Was it enough?” he says quietly when the kiss ends. “Did it hurt enough?”

His master’s face is impassive, but something flickers in his blue eyes, darkening them for a moment. Anger? Fear? Regret?

“Yes. It did.”

“Is that what you’ve had with your other lovers? Is that what you want? Because I’m not sure I can give it.”

“But you would try, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes. For you. Is there a toybox somewhere that I should acquaint myself with—”

“Enough.” The older man turns away, sitting on the very edge of the bed, hands on his knees, absently rubbing them. After a moment, he reaches to touch the dappling of rusty stains on his lover’s pillow.

“There’s more,” the younger man tells him. “But you probably guessed that.”

“Enough, I said.”

“Yes, Master.” There is no defiance in the reply, but no contrition either.

They sit in silence for some time before the younger man breaks it again. “Please, Master, may I speak?” It is a formal request to broach a subject in which he has no say and less need to know.

“Of course, Padawan.” The reply is equally formal and yet feels strange here, to both of them.

“You didn’t seem to enjoy it very much, Master.”

“Enough, Padawan!” the older man snaps.

“So I can’t please you now? Is that what’s changed?” The young man’s voice is calm and controlled, but there are undertones of bitterness in it that he cannot quite conceal. “We had that one moment of complete union and now nothing else is good enough? So we have nothing? Is that what you did wrong?”

More silence, and impatience, now, from the younger man.

“I deserve an answer, Qui-Gon. You owe your lover that much, if not your padawan.”

The older man exhales heavily, the only outward sign of his own turmoil, and makes himself turn back to his lover. “Yes, you do deserve an answer, my love.” _But not this one,_ he thinks. “Not ‘nothing.’ Less than I want. Less, I suspect, than you want, as well. Is that true?”

“Yes,” he answers in all honesty. “But less than I want of you is better than nothing at all. Must it be all or nothing?”

“My love, I have waited so long for you, for someone with whom I could have that unity, that I have run out of patience. You’ve far more forbearance than I.”

The younger man rises up on his knees facing his lover, takes the leonine head between his hands, fingers sinking possessively into the mane of hair, presses a ferocious kiss on the other’s mouth. “What makes you wait?” he says in a voice the scorches the older man. “Take what you want. Take me.”

And he would, he thinks, he would, if this young man were anyone else. Instead, he takes the kiss and returns it, then backs away. _I don’t deserve him. And he deserves better._

“I will do what I must, Padawan. Get dressed. We’ve a mission to brief for.”


End file.
